


Hospitality

by orphan_account



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Cunnilingus, F/M, Norse Myths & Legends, Sex Magic, Vaginal Sex, kind of, sort of, we will not use the l word, we will use kennings instead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-21
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-05 23:46:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/729253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ragnar is unobservant and Lagertha is not. </p><p>Written for the <a href="http://vikingskink.livejournal.com/444.html">Vikings kink meme</a>, for the prompt "Floki's crazy and loves fire. Lagertha is both crazy and fiery. Ragnar is busy raiding the Baltic. Magic happens!" I, uh. Magic. Kind of took that literally. Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hospitality

Winter. Ragnar carried the sodden bundle of a man into the house. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she had to dig her nails into her palm.

"What do you have there?" she asked, as if she didn't already know.

"An idiot." Ragnar placed the creature on the bed, started working off his clothes. "He's been talking to the gods."

"Why is he all wet?"

"He's been talking to Njord. At length." He tossed the wet clothes in her direction; she caught them, hold them at arm's length. They smelled of sea-salt. "Do you mind sharing your bed, love?"

"He's just taken a bath, so no, i don't mind." She wrung the torn clothes out on the hearth and pinned them up over the fire. They'd be salt-stiff tomorrow, probably impossible to wear. Ragnar sat on the bed and began to unlace his boots. "What's his name?"

"Floki," Ragnar said, and Lagertha shook her head, that her husband couldn't catch a hint when it was thrown in front of his face.

She kicked off her sandals and tucked herself next to the cold figure. He snorted when she touched him. "Floki, eh?"

"He's the best shipwright in Kattegat," Ragnar said. He lay down on the other side of the creature, linked arms with her over his prone body. "He's richer than the earl."

Lagertha rested her cheek on Floki's bony back. She could feel the power juddering through him, coming in waves with each shaky breath. Ragnar seemed not to notice. Her big dumb brute. She reached over to muss his hair.

He fell asleep before she did. When he was well and truly snoring she left the bed, just for a moment to find one of his tunics and a needle and thread. She climbed back in and began to stitch. The cock crowed before she knew it, and the cold-skinned creature opened its eyes to her holding out a tunic, new tailored for him.

"Good morning, Floki," she said.

He took her hand and kissed it. "Good morning, my lady Lagertha."

Beside them, Ragnar snored.

* * *

Spring. The Þing had not yet been called. Bjorn spent most of his time down the docks with the slave boys, catching frogs. Gyda went into the woods and played with her dolls until lunch. One day she came back in and said she'd seen a naked man in the woods.

"He was talking to the trees," she said.

"Wood sprite, then," Ragnar said; he was sharpening his sword on the edge of the table. Lagertha fetched him a clip on the head and he put it away. "Ow. Lucky child, to see him."

"He didn't pay any attention to me," Gyda said, pouting. "He'd only look at the trees. He put his ear to the bark. I told him he'd get ants in his hair but he didn't listen."

"What was he saying, sweet one?"

"That they'd make nice boats someday."

The bench scraped back from the table, and Ragnar stormed out. He came back half an hour later dragging Floki, giggling and wild-eyed and definitively unclothed, by the bony wrist.

"You caught it!" Gyda said, delighted.

"How very dare you," Floki said to Ragnar, seemingly uncaring of his nakedness. "I was having a nice time."

"This is _my_ farm, shipwright, and those are _my_ trees. Don't cut them down without permission." Ragnar sat him down on the bench. "Where are your clothes?"

"What needs the king of the forest of clothes?"

Gyda was wide-eyed. "Are you really the king of the forest?"

"My dear," Floki crowed, getting up from his seat and crouching in front of her, "he is kning of the forest who claims himself such. In truth I am a spider in the dark. I am the pike-fisher and the devourer of the hearts of beautiful women - beautiful women such as you, I might add. I am - "

Ragnar gave him a clout on the shoulder. "Naked in front of my child. My <i>girl-child</i>, ship-smith."

"He's thin," Lagertha noted. "Will you join us for lunch, o king of the wood?"

"He was trying to cut down my trees," Ragnar complained.

"I see no axe." Lagertha went over to the shelves and began to rifle through for another tunic, but Floki was behind her and had picked one of her more worn dresses from the pile of clothes.

"This will fit me," he said cheerfully, and wrapped it around his waist. Gyda giggled. "And no, lovely Lagertha, I will not stay for lunch, but I will take food if you have it, and drink if you've brewed it. Only if you've brewed it, lovely woman." He cast a lewd eye at her.

"Oy," Ragnar said.

Floki turned the same lewd eye at him and Lagertha burst out laughing. She fetched a brace of sausages from where they hung above the hearth and a jug of beer from where it sat on the table and offered it to him. He took both with an elaborate flourish. Took her hand, kissed it.

"Thank you, my lady Lagertha," he said.

Ragnar harrumphed.

* * *

Summer. The heat tested her patience and the children learned to avoid the house. They played in the dank shade of the trees or wet their feet on the beach down the way. The fields rippled with golden grain. Ragnar had gone to raid. He had been gone for a week. Would be gone for weeks. Her empty bed galled her even more than the heat and she could not be in the house. Instead she walked, barefoot, through the fields of gold.

He came to her in the golden field and put his scrawny arms around her from behind. He kissed her neck. "I miss him too."

She unpeeled his limbs from her body.

He laughed in her ear and came around to look in her face. He had painted himself, the ink getting stuck in the runnels of his cheeks, the fold of his brow. "Is your hospitality dependent on your husband, woman?"

"If my husband dies a-raiding, I will have no hospitality to give."

"I would nanny for your children while you raided in his memory."

She snorted. He put his arms around her again and this time she did not shake him off.

"You have been kind to me, Lagertha shield-maiden," he said. He looked in her eyes and in his she saw fires dancing. "Would you ask a boon?"

"I know better than to ask one of you."

He snicked his teeth. "Do you think so ill of me?"

She shrugged. "I know how you operate."

He mirrored her shrug, and took her hand. "Your husband is a stallion. I've treated fair with stallions before."

"And what am I?"

"A völva."

"You give me too much credit," she said, pleased that he had. "I'm merely attentive."

"Well, whatever you are." He bowed extravagantly. "You clothed me when I was naked and fed me when I was starving. I know the rules of hospitality. You are due a gift."

"And I know the rules of numbers."

"Do you indeed."

"You're due a courtesy," she said, and shrugged so her dress slipped off one shoulder.

"Oh," he said, and grinned. "Wise woman."

He kissed her naked shoulder. His lips left ink.

"Lovely woman," he said, and she shrugged again, so her dress was off both shoulders and sliding down to her belly. He touched her breasts. He kneaded the skin of her areolae between two fingers, gently-gently, and then he put his mouth against the right nipple and licked with his teeth on the very edge of her skin.

She pushed him away, put her hands on her hips. He looked at her, mouth tipped slightly open, head cocked. "No?"

"You're trying to be my husband."

He changed shape. He was Ragnar, golden-haired and blue-eyed and delicious in his nakedness. He dropped to his knees, kissed her belly where it had stretched from carrying babes. He looked up at her, blue eyes wicked. "Am I not pleasing to you?"

She brushed away his hands. "My husband thinks you're mad, and he thinks he can enslave your madness for to build his dreams. I'm not that stupid."

"Aah, but what if the god wishes to be enslaved?" He turned back to his scrawny form and worked her dress down over her hips. He lapped at the folds between her legs and she clenched her fists so as to not grab his hair. He stroked a finger down her slit and looked up at her, fiery eyes dancing. "I would make love to you, Lagertha shield-maiden."

"I'm not a maiden," she said, and pushed his head towards her.

He was good at that. He was good at making the field around her melt away. Not as good as Ragnar, of course, but even so se had to give up and collapse into the ground, had to spread herself open with her eyes locked on the blue sky. She fought for her breath to go back to normal and Floki giggled against her. He palmed the inside of her thighs, pushed them apart.

He was gentle. Too gentle. Still trying to be Ragnar. She grabbed him by his hair and rolled him over, so that she was sitting on him, so that he was hard inside her and the truth of him burst forth like a dam broken. He was in her, not in her but in her, around her, whispering in her ear, playing with her hair. He moved inside her, his hands on her breasts, his teeth on her lip, and she gave back good as she got, her nails biting his back, her hips rolling to match his, and she was light and fire around him, she was the sun and the sky. She might have screamed, into his wicked mouth, into all of him, and she pounded her hands into his shoulders.

They lay there, gasping together, still inside, and then he pulled out of her to spend himself in the grass.

"Would be unseemly," he panted, and collapsed.

She laughed. She found her dress in the grass and wriggled into it halfway. The children would be clamoring at the farmhouse door for food and she would scowl and chase them off because they had not brought their father with them.

"The first time we met," he said.

"Yes".

He yawned, exposing fangs. "Your husband thought I was talking to Njord. I wasn't talking to Njord. Why on earth would I talk to Njord? Glum man."

"Who were you talking to?"

"My son."

She had no knife to hold to his heart, no axe-hilt to shove towards his eye, but she had her two hands and they locked tight around his throat. He grinned at her.

"I have the power of foresight, remember," he rasped, "and you have a wonderful, wonderful sense of hospitality. Your husband is dear to me, my lady. No one shall feast on his bones."

She squeezed his throat. He kissed her hand and disappeared.

* * *

 

Autumn. There was a half-built boat on stands in the forest. She sat naked on the foot of the bed, two fingers plunged inside herself. Floki had a piece of cloth tied tight over his mouth and a length of rope lashing him to the bed. Ragnar was delirious with his fucking, and with the boat, and with the wife pleasuring herself on her hand, and Lagertha could feel the power juddering through her body but darling Ragnar could not feel a thing.

Her lovely idiot.

Floki caught her eye. Floki grinned best he could. Floki winked. She rolled her eyes in answer, and he sent a spark through her, bright as a star, and her cunt throbbed around her fingers and she cried out.

I owed you a boon, she heard in her head.

Wicked man, she didn't whisper, and kissed her own hand.


End file.
